Movie starring Fereydoun Farrokhzad, 1971

Remarkably, a full 30 years later, Farrokhzad’s case is still open with German prosecutors. The federal criminal police (BKA) refused to be drawn on what leads – if any – they were still chasing down for the film, as the investigation was still technically “ongoing”. “It’s an amazingly weird aspect of this case,” Siami says. For whatever reason, political or otherwise, he said, “the German authorities seem to have left it.” However, the team was able to obtain excerpts from a since-destroyed BKA report dating back to October 1993, in which Farrokhzad’s murder was described as bearing the hallmarks of an Iranian state-led operation. Entitled “Findings on Iranian State Terrorism”, it listed the killing among 21 cases of murder, kidnapping and surveillance of Iranian opposition figures in Europe. “The perpetrators apparently used a confidante in the murder of Farrokhzad,” German police noted.